


The Talk

by Howling_Harpy



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Coming Out, Friendship, Gen, Heterosexual Character, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 18:51:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21123548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Howling_Harpy/pseuds/Howling_Harpy
Summary: Harry and Dick talk aboutthat.





	The Talk

**Author's Note:**

> I really love friendships, and I loved this prompt from the second I saw it on LLSS list and just had to pick it up.
> 
> Harry is so important, okay. He's very straight in 1950s, but he's still a good bean.

It was Kitty who picked up on it on her own and then mentioned it in passing to Harry, assuming he already knew. They had been wasting away their Sunday just before the summer vacation when Kitty had suggested that they invite Dick and Lewis around for a couples’ evening of cards and cocktails, and the phrasing had given Harry a pause.

“What do you mean a couples’ evening?” he had asked.

Kitty had rolled her eyes. “Obviously we’re not going to call it that in front of our neighbours, but you get the point.”

Harry hadn’t gotten the point. “But you and me would be the only couple there.”

Kitty had given him a long look, then put a hand on his knee and slowly started: “Darling…”

“No. You’ve got it wrong.”

“You really should have noticed. They were your friends first.”

“Yeah, they are buddies – “

“Confirmed bachelor ‘buddies’ who have lived together at multiple addresses, who have endearments for each other and co-sign all their letters. Really, darling…”

Suddenly Harry had found he wasn’t as sure of his position in this argument as when they had started. The four of them kept in touch regularly, and Kitty had read plenty of their letters too, and her points were all over those.

“Oh…”

Kitty nodded and clicked her tongue before laughing. “You’re so lucky that you’re cute.”

That had launched into a deep conversation about Kitty’s attitude and how she had spotted it and why she wasn’t at all shocked (“I think it’s a little romantic, actually.”), and Harry had since put it out of his mind. 

They were in the middle of the last few weeks of school before summer and Harry had a ton of work to do, and since Nix and Dick lived upstate, the issue was easy to forget. 

It came up again when the first week of summer vacation rolled about, the stress of work lifted, and Harry remembered that he had promised to drive up to feed their dog for the weekend. 

Kitty hadn’t said anything much, just bid him goodbye and reminded him that they were his friends and that nothing needed to be different. Kitty didn’t have a problem with them, so why would Harry?

That was just what Harry thought when he was sitting in his car and driving on the highway. He didn’t think he had a problem with it, but mainly because he still didn’t quite believe it. 

But why would he have a problem? They had been friends for more than ten years and everything had been fine. Nothing had changed.

He arrived on Friday evening and found the house empty as it should be. He found the spare key hidden under one of the decorative rocks lining the flower beds and got inside, where an energetic mutt bounced up to greet him. Sally was a sandy brown mix of several hunting and herding dogs, a medium-sized ball of wiry excitement and love that both Nix and Dick cherished like a child more than a dog. 

Harry didn’t mind looking after her every once in a while as she was a well-trained, friendly dog, and besides, Nix would take her with him whenever he could, and if he couldn’t there was always a good reason. Again, Harry didn’t mind: Nix and Dick had a nice home and their television was bigger than the one Harry and Kitty had, and it was always fun to meet the fellas when they came back from whatever out-of-town engagement they had had and catch up face to face. 

But this time was slightly different. Harry fed and walked the dog just like Nix insisted (the instructions were meticulous. Harry would have just let her run around the yard but that didn’t suffice, apparently), and in the evening sat down in the living-room in front of the television. There was a film on, one he had already seen but that he had liked, and that should have been how his evening went down.

Only, he was suddenly curious. If Kitty was right, he was in a house that was shared by two guys who were also lovers, but to Harry it seemed just like any other normal home, one he had visited a hundred times by now. 

The film kept him entertained for only so long, the familiarity allowing his thoughts to wander and the temptation grow. Sally slept on the carpet by his feet, and somehow the sleeping dog was what allowed Harry to get up. The dog wasn’t going to tell on him in any case of course, but somehow he needed to be safe even from her eyes.

Harry already knew the living-room and the kitchen downstairs, those were just normal parts of a home, but upstairs was different. Of course he knew where his friends’ bedrooms were, he had seen them go there dozens of times, but he had never been there alone.

Upstairs there was a long corridor that led to several rooms. Harry knew the bathroom, but in the west wing there were two large rooms that were supposedly Dick’s and Nix’s separate rooms. The doors were closed now that neither man was home, but Harry’s need to know was greater than any obstacle.

He went to Dick’s room first. It was more like a study than a bedroom, but that fit Dick somehow. His room had several bookshelves, a desk, a sofa bed and several framed pictures on the walls. The pictures on the walls were of Easy, and somehow that felt like the permission that Harry was looking for. 

It was an ordinary room, one where a hard-working bachelor could live. Something inside Harry’s chest calmed. He didn’t know what he had expected to find, but all this normalcy that fit his image of his friend was definitely not it.

Now that he was in, he had to look around. Dick apparently chose to sleep on a narrow bed and brought his work home with him if the desk overflowing with paper was anything to go by.

Harry chuckled to himself as he approached, careful not to disturb any pile of documents that he was sure were meticulously organized. Dick hadn’t ever enjoyed paperwork but it was a necessary evil of sorts, and Harry knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t ever half-ass a job either. There was a framed picture of his family on the desk, and Harry smiled when he saw it.

Dick’s room was so normal that Harry felt a bit guilty having intruded. He hadn’t touched anything but still lined up the pens at the desk a little neater like he was subtly apologizing. 

He stepped out into the corridor and thought of going back downstairs to catch rest of the film, but as soon as he closed the door he found himself staring at Nix’s door. Harry knew he should have been satisfied with what he had already seen, but the sight of another closed door made that doubt in the back of his mind come back, and he just couldn’t stand it. 

He had to know, whatever it was, and if the answer wasn’t in Dick’s room, logically it would have to be in Nix’s. Harry opened the door and stepped in.

Nix’s room was completely different from Dick’s. Dick’s room was a study, a place that clearly doubled as a workspace where sleeping was almost like an afterthought, whereas Nix’s room was a luxuriously cosy, warm bedchamber. The hardwood floors had several thick rugs on it, the large bed took up most of the space and had thick comforters and several pillows on it, the wardrobe had four doors, and in the back wall there was a large dresser and a mirror. 

Harry chuckled to himself as he looked around in the room. He could easily imagine Nix there, lounging on the bed sideways without a care in the world. The dresser had a record player on top of it, and Harry chuckled again. He didn’t doubt that Nix needed all the closet space for his clothes, but he also apparently spent a lot of his free time there as well.

He didn’t wonder about it, Nix had always been like a housecat with his comforts, always going for the softest beds, smoothest sheets, the best food and taking time for leisure. A spoiled rich kid indeed, and so different from both Harry and Dick, but a good sport about it. 

The room had only one window, a big one just above the head of the bed and it gave a view to the forest and fields outside the house. Harry was admiring the newly bloomed greenery outside when his eyes spotted the nightstands, one on each side of the bed.

Both had lamps on them. The left one had an ashtray, two novels and a forgotten coffee mug, and the right one had a pile of books, one open and face down on top of the others, next to them a pair of reading glasses, and by the lamp a small photograph in a silver frame. 

Harry already knew from the glasses, but he stepped closer anyway and picked up the photo frame. It was a poorly angled shot of Dick and Nix together, probably taken very creatively by one of them. In the picture they were at a beach with stark, round cliffs and a village in the background. Dick and Nix were both young and in uniform, but even Dick’s cap was crooked and his buttons loose, and they were both grinning, arms draped around each other’s shoulders and cheeks pressed against each other.

Harry put the picture carefully back down on its place and went back downstairs. 

Saturday was a long, quiet summer day. It wasn’t that hot yet, but the sky was clear and everything outside was the colour of bright, fresh green and delicate in its newness. Harry took the dog out for a long walk and let her run through the fields and dig into ditches all she liked as he languidly followed her about. 

He tried to inspect his feelings and figure out what he was supposed to do, but nothing came up. Whenever he tried to think about it, any of it – his two best friends, their lives, their photographs and their double bed – his mind simply refused, barren like a winter field. 

Mild evening rolled about, then the still cool night, and then the morning. By early Sunday afternoon, a car pulled into the driveway. 

Harry was fixing himself a sandwich in the kitchen when the front door opened. Sally sprang up from her spot on the rug in front of the fireplace and ran to the door to jump up and down around Dick, who tried to gently push the dog away with his suitcase. 

“Well hello there, girl, hello,” Dick said while Sally bounced and whined. Harry stepped out of the kitchen to greet him too and caught him in the middle of shaking his light spring coat off while Sally nudged against his shins.

Dick turned to smile at him. “Hello, Harry. How have you been?” he asked.

Harry opened his mouth to say something but didn’t know what. He simply put his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “I’m alright.”

“That’s good,” Dick said. He hanged his coat, left the suitcase by the door and scratched Sally behind her ears. “I’m absolutely famished. I’m going to make something for lunch. Have you eaten?” He was already moving towards the kitchen, and Harry backed in as well.

“Just breakfast. I was actually making a snack just now.”

“Well you finish that by all means, I don’t mind,” Dick said and went through the pantry and the fridge. “I’m not planning on making anything special either, maybe just something quick in the oven, vegetables maybe and something on the side…”

“There’s still leftover chicken.”

“Oh, that’s good!”

Harry finished making his sandwich while Dick got ready to roast potatoes and carrots in the oven and apparently planned on having canned beans and cold chicken on the side. 

“Wasn’t Nix supposed to come back with you?” Harry asked.

“Yes, he was,” Dick said while peeling potatoes. “Plans changed. Blanche isn’t really well right now, and Nix didn’t want to leave her alone. He’s going to stay with her for the week and take her to her friend’s place for the next weekend.”

“That’s good of him.”

Dick threw him a smile over his shoulder. “Yeah, Nix can be a very caring brother when he decides to bring it.” He got a chopping board and started to slice the vegetables. “Was everything here alright?”

“Yes, everything was totally fine. Sally’s been good. We’ve been on long walks since the weather is so nice,” Harry replied.

Dick hummed in agreement. “It’s summer again. You must be excited about your vacation. Any plans with Kitty?” 

The mention of Kitty brought back the conversation that had started this all, and Harry felt dread in the bottom of his stomach. In the next moment he felt silly too, thinking back to that little photograph Dick had framed on his nightstand that definitely proved that whatever this was had started far longer ago than two weeks. 

Harry swallowed and approached carefully. “Yeah, actually. We talked about it a few weeks ago. She thought of inviting you and Nix over for cards and cocktails.”

“Oh, that would be nice,” Dick mused. He put the chopped vegetables into an oven dish, then poured cooking oil, salt, pepper and rosemary on them. “Though we’ll have to leave cocktails for you and Kitty. Nix hasn’t taken a drink in seven months, and I’m afraid that I’m still me as well.”

“Oh I’m sure that’ll be alright,” Harry said. This wasn’t the first time Nix had sworn off the drink, and if the past was any indicator he might as well be drinking again when they’d actually come over, but that wasn’t the part he was wondering about. He took a deep breath. “Kitty wanted to make it a couples’ thing.”

Dick was drying his hands on a dish towel and as soon as Harry said ‘couples’ he froze for a moment, then slowly turned around and leaned his back on the counter. 

For a second Harry thought that Dick was going to deny it, to maybe laugh at the ridiculousness or even snap at him, but all there was on his face was the carefully guarded neutral mask of an expression that Harry placed in the context of unpleasant orders and incompetent officers. He returned Dick’s gaze. 

“She said that, huh?” Dick said.

“Sure did.”

Dick regarded him quietly for a beat. “That sounds very nice. Lew and I would love to join you,” he said in a colourless voice.

Harry took a deep breath. “Jesus Christ. That’s how it is, isn’t it?”

Dick squared his shoulders and quirked his brows. “Sure is.”

Harry groaned and stared up to the ceiling. If he had been uncertain with his words before, now he was truly speechless. “What the hell?” he whispered to the kitchen lamp. 

“It is what it is,” Dick said, his voice steely.

Harry lowered his gaze back at him and found his friend staring right at him with fierceness he rarely saw, and never directed at himself. Harry blinked. “How didn’t I ever…? How could I miss that?!”

The line of Dick’s shoulder twitched in a tense shrug. “Well, in your defence it’s not like we make much of a scene about us.”

“Kitty knew!” Harry argued.

Dick’s brows rose. “Is that what brought this subject up? She told you?”

“No, she thought I knew!”

“Well then,” Dick said, then actually chuckled drily. “She owes Lew money.”

“There was _a bet_?!”

Dick smacked his lips and nodded. “Don’t take it too personally.”

“That’s…!” He was going to say that that was too much to ask, and it was, but he was really getting off topic. This wasn’t about him. How dumb and blind he felt was secondary. He rubbed his forehead and tried to gather his thoughts. 

Dick crossed his arms and said nothing, either unwilling to help Harry with the subject or just allowing him the time he needed.

Finally Harry let his hand drop. “How long?” 

Dick seemed to be taken aback by the question and didn’t answer right away. He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged and said: “I suppose it became a thing in Austria. Around those times, I think.” 

Harry had to rub at his face again. “Jesus Mary and Joseph. I was there! Right in front of me!” 

Dick grumbled under his breath. “Right in front of our superior officers and MPs too, so, again, discretion really was the key here – “ 

“That’s… That’s almost as long as Kitty and I,” Harry muttered.

Dick clicked his tongue. “Lew and I have been in love for longer.” 

“How on Earth – “

“Since Toccoa.”

“That is forever!” Harry cried out. “What the… All this time… What?”

The bundle of Dick’s arms tightened even more. He pinched his lips together and took a deep inhale before speaking up again: “Is this going to be a problem?”

Harry paused. That wasn’t what he had expected at all, he was still too busy browsing through all of their war memories to think ahead. “What?”

Dick looked carefully neutral and repeated himself very slowly: “Is this. Going to be. A problem?”

“Problem?” Harry said. “No. No, at least I don’t… I don’t think so. I just… I don’t…” He huffed impatiently, frustrated with himself, but couldn’t miss how Dick’s whole demeanour relaxed. “I just don’t understand,” Harry meekly admitted.

Dick let his arms unfold and turned to put his vegetable dish in the oven, then kicked the door shut with maybe more force than strictly necessary. “What’s there to get? It’s actually very simple.”

“Nu-uh. Not for me,” Harry argued. “I’ve heard about this stuff, but I’ve never actually seen…” He came to a halt and flushed. It wasn’t like he had seen Dick and Nix actually _do_ anything like that. All he had seen them be was friends. 

Friends who shared a house.

And a bed. 

He blushed awkwardly. It seemed that Dick knew exactly where his mind had wandered to because he pursed his lips and dropped his gaze to the floor. For a moment they were stuck in that uncomfortable silence, only the vegetables sizzling in the oven and Sally shifting on the floor, flopping onto her left side.

“It’s not really that big of a deal,” Dick said when the silence finally got too much. “I don’t know what you’ve heard or what you imagine, but most stories are just bogus anyway. How we are is just how we are.”

Harry frowned and nodded even though he didn’t know what he was agreeing on. He had heard very few actual stories and those were dirty rumours back in the army, the kind that no one took seriously, but he had some sort of an idea about the men who got in bed with other men. Only, there were so few stories and Harry couldn’t remember ever actually hearing anyone talk about it generally, so he didn’t know where those ideas of his came from.

“Yeah, alright,” he said after a moment, “just how you are, got it. But I guess I just… What I’m trying to ask is…” He still didn’t know and when he glanced at Dick, he saw him almost glaring at him and concluded that he was not about to help him. Harry got a feeling that this conversation was just as hard for Dick as it was for him, but he couldn’t tell if it was the subject itself in all of its intimacy, or was Harry making it worse. 

“Just… What happened to you? What went…” _Wrong_? That was what he meant, but it felt rude to say it to Dick’s face. Everything was out on the table and still Harry felt like they were dancing around some sort of a dirty secret. “…off the rails?” he finished, although he wasn’t at all sure that was any better than calling it wrong.

This time Harry kept his eyes on Dick and didn’t shy away. Dick still had that unreadable neutrality about him paired with his rigid posture and hard gaze, and a crazy idea that Dick was afraid crossed Harry’s mind. He tried to shift his discomfort and confusion into kind concern. 

Dick took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders back like warming up for exercise. “That’s… That’s not a really good way of looking at this,” he finally said.

Harry fought against his frustration that threatened to raise its head again. “How so?”

Dick huffed exasperatedly and his shoulders slumped. He was radiating some sort of anxious energy that was enough to make Sally get up from the floor and trot to him, sniffing around his knees worriedly. Dick hunched down to pet her reassuringly. “Because nothing really happened, as you put it. Nothing went ‘off the rails’. We didn’t go wrong; we went right along the path set out for us. We acted on our God-given nature and good things came out of it.”

“Oh,” Harry said, feigning understanding even though he really didn’t understand.

Dick seemed to sense it, because he straightened up to look at him again, now a strained smile in place of the guarded neutrality. “You probably didn’t mean to be rude, but you said some unkind things about us,” he said. “I get that this is quite a shock, and trust me when I say that we didn’t hide this from you because we wanted to play a joke on you. Lying to you, like lying to the rest of our friends and our families, has always been hard, but that’s how things must be. We are trying to survive.”

He put such a strong emphasis on the word ‘survive’ that it threw Harry’s perception in a whole new direction. He could only imagine the amount of work and energy that went to keeping a secret like this and felt a heavy tug of sympathy, but the amount of work also just strengthened his earlier impression. 

“But if it’s so much work and worry, then why do you do it in the first place? There are so many easier paths, for both of you! And you could always be friends, no one’s saying you can’t,” he argued.

Dick’s eyes were steely again. “Kitty crossed an ocean for you,” he said. “You engaged her for over a year and then brought her here. Would you two be satisfied if you had remained as simply friends? Maybe as pen-pals who might never meet again while you both married other people and had families with them?”

That shut Harry up. Just the mere thought of settling for friendship with Kitty and letting her go was a painful pang in his chest and he felt a flare of strange hypothetical jealousy over his wife. He lowered his gaze to his feet and felt pieces clicking into place.

Dick seemed to conclude that he had made his case. He let his arms finally unfold and pushed himself away from the counter to check on the dish in the oven, and then went to a cupboard to fetch himself a plate. He took the chicken out of the fridge and started to fix himself a plate. 

He kept his gaze down when he spoke up again. “I’m not mad about your questions, Harry. But I want you to understand that Lew and I are not some sort of a mistake or a dysfunction, we are a couple. We are like this because we love each other and want to have a life together.” 

Harry looked up again and saw a faint blush on Dick’s cheeks. Dick looked him in the eye and defying his apparent shyness around feelings quietly said: “I love him.”

The strangest thing was that Harry knew that already, he had always known. It was plain as day to anyone who took a single good look at Dick and Nix.

“So… That’s a yes for the couples’ evening of cards?” Harry asked.

A smile spread on Dick’s face and his eyes warmed up again. “Yes, I suppose it is.”


End file.
